


there's a hole inside of me the shape of you

by reachedthebitterend



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: M/M, relationships are more mentioned than explicit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-23 19:43:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20203933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reachedthebitterend/pseuds/reachedthebitterend
Summary: Where Alex always has whatever it is that Michael is missing.





	there's a hole inside of me the shape of you

**Author's Note:**

> written 06/04/19

Michael only gets detention when he’s tardy three or more times a week. He tries really hard to be on time, but sometimes he can’t help but be late.

Mr. Gutierrez always has an old thousand piece puzzle set that he leaves out for Michael to kill time if he doesn’t have any school work to finish.

Michael spends two hours finishing up the entire puzzle, only for it to be missing a piece.

He searches the entire room and asks Mr. Gutierrez, but he shrugs and tells him that it probably fell somewhere.

Michael frowns at the puzzle for a full five minutes, feeling a niggling feeling in the pit of his stomach.

A knock on the door startles him to look away from the empty space to the door to see Alex Manes.

He walks to Mr. Gutierrez and hands him a stack of papers before he looks up and over to where Michael is still staring at him like an idiot.

Alex’s eyes dart away as soon as he makes contact, looking to the puzzle and furrowing his brow.

Mr. Gutierrez thanks him and Alex nods his head before he walks towards Michael.

Michael holds his breath, but Alex doesn’t even look at him as he reaches into the front pocket of his jeans and pulls something out too small for Michael to see.

He leans forward over the puzzle reaching out with his hand and then he pulls back and smiles at Michael.

“Looks like I had your missing puzzle piece.”

Michael’s eyes fall from Alex to the puzzle to see that he’d placed the puzzle piece in place, a red splotch of flowers that literally draws your eye directly to it.

When Michael looks back up to thank him, Alex is gone.

Michael looks back at the puzzle and tries not think that it’s significant somehow.

**

Michael fails miserably in that aspect, but he tried really hard.

The universe really just seems to be conspiring against him.

Forming any type of _anything _with Alex Manes has bad idea written all over with starting with how very much he _doesn’t _want to fly under the radar with the way he dresses and his inability to back down from a fight and ending with the fact that he belongs to an Airforce Legacy family.

And yet-

And _yet_.

**

Michael is searching frantically for his notebook, the one that has all of the schematics for the spaceship, and all of the information grid by grid to every section of the crash he’s already checked and what he’s found.

Even if anyone finds it, it’s unlikely that they’ll be able to decipher it. But there is always the possibility that someone will find it who’ll know exactly what it is.

He’s about to empty his locker all over again when someone clears their throat behind him.

He turns and freezes when he sees Alex.

Alex smiles sheepishly at him, and waves his notebook in the air.

“Looking for this?” he asks, and just tightens his fingers on the book when Michael just continues to watch him. “I found it in my bag. I must’ve taken it by accident during English.”

And Michael remembers then that they’d been sharing his AP Literature textbook this morning since Alex had forgotten his at home.

AP English was his first class of the morning, and Michael was more often than not half asleep during it.

Michael turns completely, and reaches for the notebook.

Alex hands it over easily and stuffs his hands into the front pockets of his jeans rocking back on his heels.

“Thanks,” Michael says grabbing his bag and stuffing the notebook inside.

Alex just smiles, that same smile from before, eyes bright and lips just slightly curled at the edges.

It _feels _like it’s just for Michael, and it’s thoughts like _that _that Michael should be avoiding.

“Anytime.”

Alex leaves with a wave of his hand and Michael watches him go.

**

Michael considers maybe that _he’s _the one responsible for this, without meaning to.

He doesn’t know how else to explain it.

Over the next couple of days, Alex appears with his book bag the exact second he realized that he’d lost it, saying that he found it in the bathroom, hands Michael a bandaid casually, during English when he gets a papercut looking through the notes Ms. Johnson left on his essay, pulls _Michael’s _spare AP Chemistry textbook out of his own bag, saying that he found it on top of the table at the library, _and _he drops Michael’s favorite hoodie on top of his head when he starts shuddering while they’re watching a documentary in AP History, a hoodie that Michael had thought he’d lost _months _ago.

The final straw comes when Michael is brooding into his lunch because he lost his lucky guitar pick and he was _positive _it meant he was going to fail his Chemistry and Anatomy finals and lose his scholarship, and Isobel is doing a really bad job attempting to cheer him up.

“Hey,” Alex says, interrupting Isobel mid sentence. She makes an affronted noise, but Michael’s attention is completely caught by Alex who ignores Isobel to smile at Michael.

“I’m positive that this is yours,” he says and drops something from his hand to the table.

Michael’s lucky guitar pick bounces slightly on top of the table.

It’s black and cracked at the tip and has the faded neon green imprint of an alien, but Michael has never failed a test while he’s had it stuffed into the front pocket of his jeans, and the overwhelming relief that he feels at seeing it is nothing compared to the feeling that sweeps up from the pit of his stomach and makes his heart beat fast in his chest, and the air catch in his lungs as he looks back up at Alex.

Alex freezes, eyes going a little wide at the look on Michael’s face, and he licks his lips and looks to the side blinking rapidly.

Michael swallows hard and grabs the guitar pick.

“Thanks,” he says voice hoarse and low.

“Anytime,” Alex says, voice equally low as he walks away.

Michael clenches his fingers tightly around the pick and he waits all of five seconds before he turns and sees Alex walking out through the cafeteria doors.

“You’re an idiot,” Isobel says when he just continues to stare even after the doors close.

Michael turns to look at her, furrowing his brow in confusion.

She just rolls her eyes, but doesn’t say anything else. When he looks at Max, Max gives him the same confused look back.

Michael stuffs the guitar pick into the front pocket of his jeans and he wonders if he takes something from Alex, if Alex will come find him to look for it, or will he wait for Michael to magically appear with what he’s looking for.

**

It’s only when Michael’s fingers wrap around the cassette tape as he’s searching for his wallet on the floor of the truck that Michael remembers how he’d woken up that morning feeling a little bit nostalgic and wanting to listen to one of the old mixtapes that Alex always left lying around the music room.

He pulls wraps his fingers around the case and pulls it out and he knows he should feel surprised to see Alex’s familiar handwriting, but he’s not, not really.

He laughs when he realizes that it’s the same mixtape that he’d been thinking about that morning.

He sets the mixtape down on the passenger’s side and keeps looking for his wallet.

**

The envelope is taped the door of the Airstream when Michael walks out.

He’s a little pissed and a lot late because he’d been searching for his car keys and wasn’t able to find them, and even though he technically didn’t need keys to get wherever he wanted, Isobel was going to kill him if he’d lost the spare key to her apartment again.

He stops and stares at the envelope feeling all of his anger seeping out of him.

For one crystal clear second, he thinks that maybe Alex is dead, and the thought makes his stomach clench, and he feels dizzy and nauseous for a second before he remembers that even if Alex _was _dead, Michael would be the last person to know.

He inhales deeply and then grabs the envelope, ripping it open like pulling off a band aid.

His car keys fall to the floor in a clatter, and Michael’s laughter startles him into even more laughter as he leans down and grabs the keys.

He looks at them, and passes his finger over the shiny new keychain, shaped like a dog tag, Alex’s name stamped across the front.

Michael stuffs the keys in his pocket and ignores the warm feeling that threatens to fill him up, dousing it with the cold feeling that spreads through him at the thought that Alex was in Roswell, and he hadn’t come to see him.

**

Isobel is getting married and Michael’s tux was apparently shipped to the wrong address.

Michael walks out of the tuxedo place and takes deep breaths so that he doesn’t accidentally explode some windows with his frustration.

He doesn’t know how he’s going to tell Isobel that he doesn’t have a suit to wear when she’d paid a lot of money for the tux that was on its way to Albuquerque.

Especially when her wedding was in less than eight hours.

Michael drives to the ranch needing at least a few hours to himself before he has to break the news to her.

He doesn’t know why it surprises him when he jumps out of the truck to find the black bag with his tuxedo hanging from the door of the Airstream.

There is a note taped to the front of it addressed to him in Alex’s familiar handwriting, and Michael thinks that six years should be more than enough time for him to have gotten used to this.

But he doubts he’s _ever _going to get used to this.

He flips open the folded note and snorts at the message.

_Tell Isobel I’ll never forgive her if she doesn’t get at least a dozen pictures of you in this._

At the bottom in small print, rushed, like Alex had written it as an afterthought, _anytime_.

Michael crumples the note in his fist and grabs the tux.

Well at least he won’t be ruining Isobel’s day after all.

**

“What part of I don’t even have an ID, did you not understand?” Michael asks as Isobel stands in front of his door looking at her watch and giving him an impatient look.

“The part where you can easily go track down one of your unsavory…buddies and as them to make you a fake one?”

Michael gives Isobel an incredulous look, but before he can say anything else he realizes that there is an envelope taped to the driver’s side window of his truck.

“Did you do that?” he asks, pointing at it.

Isobel shakes her head at him.

“It’s Airforce, though,” she says and jumps out of the way when he charges past her towards the truck. “I figured it would be a warning because you were caught trespassing, again.”

Michael ignores her, and tugs the envelope away from the window.

He shakes it, and hears the sound as the plastic edges of an ID slide around the inside of it.

Michael sighs and tears open the envelope and sure enough it’s an ID.

One that looks really real, and even has Michael’s name and address and birthday, and _current weight_ and height right.

He bites down on his lip hard so that he doesn’t smile and gives Isobel a look.

“Looks like we’re doing this after all, just give me a few to make myself presentable.”

“Just don’t wear anything that has holes in it and you’ll be fine,” she calls after him as he closes the door behind himself.

Michael tosses the empty envelope aside where it lands on top of a pile of others like it.

**

Michael is freezing.

His lips feel like two icicles and he knows he’s probably going to have frostbite if he doesn’t get in soon, but he needs to finish mending the fence for Mr. Pratchett or else he can look for another place to spend the rest of one of the coldest winters they’ve had in a while.

He drops the materials he came back to town for into the back of the truck with a clatter, wanting to get into his truck even if the heater sucks, and stops short at the scarf wrapped around the side mirror.

It looked thick and warm, and _familiar_.

Michael thinks he had one that looked just like it back in high school.

He debates whether or not he should grab the scarf when a strong gust of wind blows and his mouth feels like it’s tearing apart.

He grabs the scarf and wraps it around his neck and covers his mouth and nose, and inhales deeply, surprised at the smell, something piney and smokey and warm.

He thinks about Alex, and closes his eyes for a few minutes before he gets into the truck and heads back out to the ranch.

**

Seeing Alex after ten years of nothing but random items appearing whenever Michael needed them was a shock to his system.

Michael spends the rest of the day feeling like he took a misstep somewhere this morning and ended up in an alternate universe where Alex is actually close enough that Michael can touch him, but still so far away.

Still, he’s not planning on going to the reunion until he gets into his car after buying his dinner at the Crashdown and sees the thin silver chain hanging from around the rearview mirror and feels his gut clenching.

Thinking about Alex inevitably leaves him thinking about things he’s lost and found, and he remembers vividly the last time he saw this necklace, wrapped around Alex’s neck as Alex’s father dragged him out of the tool shed.

It was Michael’s necklace, one that he never took off, but that Alex had slipped from his neck and around his own saying that he’ll give it back when Michael decides that this thing between them is over.

Michael had been thinking about it since he’d seen Alex that morning. Not about getting it back, but about how Alex had looked wearing nothing but that.

He carefully moves it from around the mirror to his neck and wonders how he can give it back to Alex without Alex being able to give it back to him.

**

Michael hadn’t really been expecting Alex to be there when he woke up. But it still stung when he opened his eyes to find that Alex had disappeared during the night.

Michael spends a few minutes looking up at the ceiling of the Airstream, settling into the soreness he can feel in his hips and thighs and sighs before he pulls the sheets off himself and heads for the bathroom.

He’s toweling his hair dry, looking over the equations on his desk and written on the wall, when he spots a piece of paper pinned towards the end of the equation.

It’s a napkin with the Wild Pony logo on it.

Michael vaguely remembers a burst of inspiration that he’d lost immediately a few months ago, but he hadn’t remembered seeing Alex around.

He looks at the numbers and feels the same jolt of inspiration he’d had that night, he pulls the paper away from the wall and rushes out of the Airstream and to his truck.

He needs to get to his lab, now.

**

Michael thinks he might be going out of his mind.

He misses Isobel so much, and he thinks that maybe it’s frying his brain.

She’s always been about fifty percent of his impulse control, and he doesn’t know how to act like a normal person when she’s not around.

He’d been searching through her office for a picture that he thought maybe he’d given to her for the reunion, but it wasn’t in the box of pictures she had pinned together with the names of who she got them from.

He’s heading to his truck, and stops short when he spots the envelope tucked beneath his windshield wipers.

He looks around, but there was no one, not even a car passing through, or parked suspiciously.

He already knows what he’s going to find when he opens the envelope, and he doesn’t know why he thought that whatever this _thing _was would disappear once Alex had in an official capacity broken up with him.

But no.

No.

He tears the envelope open and there are two pictures tucked inside.

The one he was looking for.

The first picture he’d ever taken with Isobel and Max. They had their arms wrapped around each other, smiling widely at the camera.

They looked so _young_.

The second picture makes him freeze, eyes wide open in shock as he stares at it.

He can vaguely remember the first field trip he took here in Roswell.

He’d just forgotten that Alex had been his buddy the whole time since his two best friends where buddies with each other and Max and Isobel had partnered up immediately.

The picture is of them sitting side by side on the bus seat. He has his arm wrapped around Alex’s shoulder, leaning into him and smiling widely as he looks at the camera, and Alex is laughing with his head thrown back.

Written in the back of the picture in Isobel’s curly handwriting is, _Michael’s First Friend in Roswell._

Michael swallows hard and wonders what exactly Alex is trying to tell him when he hasn’t spoken to Michael in weeks.

**

Michael is thinking of a way that he could open up the bottles with his powers when today was supposed to be an Anything Alien Related Free get together, when he notices the alien head shaped bottle opener resting on top of the tailgate of his truck, anchoring a piece of paper down.

Alex’s name pounds through his head like a heartbeat and he already knows that he’s not going to be able to keep his promise of no alien stuff.

He grabs the opener and tucks it in between his fingers holding the two beer bottles and unfolds the note one handed.

Alex signs off on the bottom of the the official looking statement of arrest with his name all over it, _Come find me as soon as you can so we can go over your options._

Michael stuffs the letter into his pocket and goes back to the others.

He doesn’t look at Maria as he makes his excuses, and hands the beers to Max giving him a significant look.

Max inclines his head and distracts Liz and Rosa as Maria purses her mouth and gives him a look.

He just smiles and tells her that he’ll be back, something just came up that he needs to take care off, promising that it’s definitely not alien related.

She doesn’t look like she believes him, and he’s only getting into his truck when he hears Rosa say, “Hey, isn’t that Alex’s bottle opener?”

He starts the car and drives away before he can hear what anyone else says in response.

**

The toolbox that Michael has been searching for all morning is sitting on top of the bar of the Wild Pony when he walks in to have lunch with Maria.

For one second, he thinks that maybe, Maria found it, a small part of him hoping that maybe whatever makes Alex find whatever he needs somehow transferred to Maria, but then he sees Alex walking out of the bathroom.

“Make sure that Michael doesn’t know I found it okay? I don’t want him to kno-”

He stops when he finds Michael standing right in the middle of the bar.

He hadn’t even known that Maria and Alex were talking again, much less having conversations about him.

“Too late,” Maria says sounding half amused and just a little bit worried, like she always does when the fact that Michael and Alex used to date is made crystal clear.

Michael swallows hard and puts his hand on top of the toolbox, “Thanks,” he says glad that his voice doesn’t come out hoarse.

“Anytime,” Alex says automatically, and then looks at Maria and then back at Michael and then up at the ceiling. “Okay, I’m going.”

He leaves before either Maria or Michael can say anything, and Michael looks down to the floor so that he doesn’t watch him go.

**

Michael walks out of the floral shop and feels the anxiety that’s been eating at him all day ease up a little.

Just because he lost the gift that he was planning on giving to Maria for her birthday didn’t mean that all hope was lost.

He heaves the giant sunflowers over to the side to fit them into the front of his truck and freezes when he sees the small pink gift bag resting in the passenger seat.

Michael swallows hard, and feels his stomach clench.

He drops the flowers into the seat, and closes the door a little too hard.

When he gets to the Wild Pony, he leaves the gift in the front seat of his truck, along with the flowers.

What he needs is a drink. He’ll figure out the gift thing later.

**

Michael isn’t exactly sure what it is that he needs, but alcohol isn’t cutting it, and drinking enough acetone to numb himself to sleep isn’t an option, and falling into a sex coma is out of the question when Maria has other things to do that don’t involve staying in bed with Michael all day.

It’s not until Michael can’t even drown himself in work, that he’s thinking about heading down the bunker to see if he can do anything there to kill his restless energy that he spots the vase of flowers set right in front of the Airstream, that it hits him with the force of a thousand bricks.

The explosion in Caulfield happened one year ago today.

And Michael didn’t even remember the date, probably because he’s been too busy trying not to remember it.

If he thinks about it he can trace the restless feeling back to a few weeks ago, when it started getting cold again.

And the thunderstorm last night gave him nightmares full of fire and pain that he vaguely remembered.

The arrangement is beautiful and expensive looking, roses and lilies and chrysanthemums and tulips.

Michael picks it up carefully, and the note sticking to the front of it has address written in Alex’s handwriting.

An address that Michael knows without looking it up, will take him to the Roswell Cemetery.

**

Michael leaves Max’s house with a squeal of tires and tries not to feel betrayed that Max would kick him out because Liz is comforting Maria.

He thinks that what he needs is a drink, and has to stop the car and pull over when he realizes that he can’t go to the Wild Pony anymore, or at least for a while.

He leans back in his seat and takes a deep breath and thinks that it’s been too long since he’s had to steal some liquor from the store, but it should be just like riding a bike.

He laughs a little, self deprecating remembering the last time he’d stolen a bottle from a liquor store.

He looks down to his glove box wondering if he has enough cash in there for at least a small bottle and his eyes drop to the space beneath and his heart leaps to his throat when he spots the two bottles of whiskey and small bottle of acetone wrapped together like a gift waiting for him.

Michael thinks about not reading the note taped to it, wondering if he really needs the second heartbreak today, but he unfolds it anyway.

_Anytime, I mean it Guerin._

Michael swallows hard, and when he pulls back onto the street, he takes the road that leads him out of Roswell.

**

Michael is pleasantly buzzed on whiskey and the fact that he made Maria smile and she didn’t kick him out when he started a fight with the guy who kept hitting on her and wouldn’t take no for an answer when he gets home to find that his Airstream is out of place revealing the manhole down to his lab.

The pleasant feeling gets even warmer at the thought that Alex is here.

For the past couple of weeks they’ve been getting closer, becoming friends, finally, and sliding into something comfortable that Michael thinks is one day going to naturally conclude in him pushing Alex into a stable surface and kiss him until he can’t think about anything else ever again, but right now, he’s enjoying the fact that Alex is always getting into Michael’s space like he owns it, and encourages Michael getting into his space.

He has a brand new key attached to a brand new keychain that had appeared the last time that Michael had lost his keys that opens the door to Alex’s cabin.

He drops down into the bunker, only slightly losing his balance and turns with a wide smile and spots Alex leaning back against his lab table looking at the alien console with a lost look in his eyes.

He doesn’t notice that Michael is in the room with him, until Michael leans against him, bumping their hips together.

Alex jumps a little and gives him a sheepish smile.

“You’re welcome by, anytime,” Michael says before Alex can apologize.

Alex licks his lips nodding his head and looks back to the alien console.

Michael watches him, letting the warm feeling spread, and he frowns when he sees the lost look sink back into Alex’s eyes.

“I’m never going to finish it you know,” Michael says, and gives Alex a half smile when Alex turns to look at him with wide eyes. “I’ve searched the entire crash zone square foot by square foot for years, and all the pieces that I’ve found are right here. So either the government has it and I’m never getting my hands on it, or the pieces are too small to be found, and I’ll never be able to get my hands on it.”

Alex swallows and looks back to the alien console.

Michael pushes from the lab table and puts his hand on the console watching the ripples as they spread.

“I’ve broken it apart and put it back together in so many different ways, but no matter how hard I try or how many times I do it, it’s just never finished.”

He smiles at Alex who is looking at him with wide eyes. “Guess, it just isn’t meant to be.”

Alex still has the lost look on his face, and Michael really doesn’t like it so he does the first thing that pops into his head.

Letting the alcohol ease any of his worries, he steps forward, pressing Alex into the lab table with his hips and kisses the lost look off his face.

As soon as their lips touch, Michael feels it like something vital that he’d been missing just slot into place right in the middle of his _soul_.

He grins when their lips part, and Alex kisses him again, hard and messy before Michael can say anything.

**

Two days later when he spots the black bag that Alex never takes off when they go off on their missions, leaning against the table where the alien console is resting, he knows exactly what he’s going to find when he opens the bag.

He leaves it alone and heads out of the bunker and back to the fire pit with the bottle of accelerant that he’d been sent to look for in his hands.

The piece that he’d been missing in the puzzle that was his life was waiting for him by the unlit fire pit, freezing his balls off, and Michael was in no rush to let him go any time soon.


End file.
